I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at SmartNews in Feb 2022
Interview
Had a call with the recruiter first, followed by two technical interviews. The first round is a coding section. The second one is a system design round. The system design question is just a general question, not hard, but the coding question is a bit tricky. Overall not very good experience
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The system design question is just a general question, quite frequently asked in system design interviews.
The coding question is a modification of a usual coding question. The original one is not hard, but they changed it a bit and that makes it very tricky to solve.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at SmartNews (Tokyo) in Sept 2020
Interview
I applied at smartnews Tokyo, Japan.
a recruiter reached out to me shortly after to schedule a call, she turned out to be a very nice person to talk to, then asked for my availability to schedule first technical interview round (problem solving and system design), however when I provided my availability she did not respond until two weeks later, and asked my to share another availability.
The first part of this round was problem solving (45 mins) and the person who interviewed me was also very nice and spoke perfect English, I solved the question he asked on a problem solving platform and moved on to the second interview of system design (1H).
This one was slightly worse than the first, the person who interviewed did not speak very good English but was understandable, and the interview itself was carried on google docs, which I thought was weird given that I should draw something, so I just talked.
**All the process was done remotely**
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
(Problem solving) merge sorted K linked lists.
(system design) design a part of the system that can deliver emergency notification to users